Fine them $1 Billion per tree, AND they have to pay to replace every single tree at its market value for it's age.
Once that's all done, then they can request permission to build a new data center, which will be declined. Fuck Google.
Is this the actual plan or are you just making suggestions?
I bet their politicians allow it to happen.
This is a nasty thing to do without proper permits and I fully support Google getting slapped for it. For a country who has practically relied on forestry for 100+ years, the native Finnish subcontractors that everyone uses for these things are surprisingly bad at doing it properly. Last year another company casually crushed over some protected freshwater pearl mussels while doing cuts -- which was enviromentally speaking actually a much worse thing than what Google did this year. Nobody outside of Finland probably heard about it though, because there was no "big evil company" involved.
The final responsibility is still Google's though, of course, but those subcontractors really should have more sense and understanding in what they're doing.
All that said, let's calibrate the magnitude of this disaster. They felled 300-400 hectares of commercial forest. That's about 0.06% of the annual forest harvest in Finland.
Google getting slapped for it
Are you nuts? They deserve the guillotine. Every single one of them. Fuck them. Pieces of shit.
Last week, Google’s Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, apologised for the forest clearings but claimed the company had acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time”.
That understanding being "it's more profitable to just do it and pay the fine"
Process the fine for each tree individually. And of course they can't do anything with the land until the whole thing is processed.
So do something.
Each tree is priceless, and the forest is more than the sum of its parts.
Expropriate Google's assets to make up for some of the loss.
Ban them for a year and fine them for triple what is a fair penalty.
Otherwise it's a business expense
The "move fast, break things" shtick. They mean laws with it. Worst case, you pay a fine.
If the world was a just place they'd pay a fine and pay to have new trees planted where the old ones where removed. Anything short of that is simply the cost of doing business.
You're not wrong, but Google didn't just take the trees. They stripped the topsoil:
After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches.
Wonder why. Wouldn't have anything to do with making sure Google could not be ordered to replant the illegally felled trees, I'm sure.
So now they should be ordered to replace the topsoil, then replace all the trees, and to pay a massive fine as well.
So I assume just a minor fine and some angry words?
Knowing Finland's governments, it won't be even those. They'll more likely take Google's side and tell the population how it's a price we must pay for being competitive, and how we need these foreign corporations raping Finnish nature to create jobs and shit. No European bougie gives a shit about the countries they lead or the populations they claim to represent.
There's a datacentre being planned in Skellefteå I think and this is exactly what's being said. "It'll bring 4000 jobs" like fucking what? Will they have 4000 people standing there caressing the circuits or something? Get fucking real. 🙃
Yeah, they're building one in my home town atm. They talk a big talk how this shit is beneficial for everyone, how our electrical grid is "one of the most stable in Europe", how this shit will bring more jobs. Lies, lies, more lies. That's all the bougies know how to do. They just fucking lie.
Yeah. It's the same here. They're building it in the north because the electricity is cheaper and there are fewer people that'll complain. It's the same reasoning why they're building them out in the desert in the U.S., fewer people and a local government that's easier to bribe.
The proponents are all "we're going to need this compute power in the EU too!" right so let's buy it when it's hideously inflated in the middle of a bubble. Fucking fivehead.
Yeah it's absurd. A horribly flawed, inefficient attempt by the politicians to claw back some semblance of relevance on a global stage, while serving their own class interests. Just throw more money at the problem, that should fix it. What do you mean the energy grid collapsed?
Well, the current government is run by corporate puppets and right wing nutters that were willing to do anything just to be called ministers.
Not very hard to guess how this is gonna go.
Each tree is probably more than $10,000+. Doing the math, they'll probably pay a fine of about $100, give or take $100
Even if they were charged a $10b fine, that's a miniscule percentage of their profits each year and corporations that big always look at them as operating expenses
Prime example: Verizon
There should be criminal investigations over that and prosecution of Google employees or their contractors, whoever was operating in Finland (and someone had to). If that was indeed all legal, than laws need to be changed.
“When will these Fins rise up and do something? Don’t they see what is happening and they are just sitting around doing nothing. They voted for this.”
'See when you're rich, they let you do it".
250,000?! Jesus Christ
All because normies can't take it upon themselves to do any research and change search engines and stop using google products...we gave them this power.
I hate people.
I've been using DDG.
Individual action as a way to effect change or "voting with your dollar" is a myth that these large corporations benefit from. Sure, we should stop using their services, but you're never going to convince people to individually give things up in the hundreds of millions.
You gotta force legislators into actually doing their jobs, and failing that, burn down the fucking data centers.
Lol blame people while a whole government does fucking nothing but be concerned.
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